The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1887-06-23
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
THE NEW EDUCATION SHOWN TO
BE OLD IN THEORY.
Prof. BransOn Compares the Education
OF To-Day With the Old EducatiOn---
Quotations From s.The FatherS.''

quotations From s'Ihe F'atherS.'
Especial Cor. STATE CIIRONICLE.l
In point of theories, nothing remains to
be said about education. In matter of
educational practices we are yet far from
being salted unto salvation. The man
who thinks that the New Education in
wolves principles very much younger than
the everlasting hills has dabbed in his
torical pedagogy, and to little purpose.
The fact is the teaching principles so much
talked about Of late began to be promul
gated among men at very early day.
But | beg that we do not make the COM
mon mistake of supposing that there is
nothing new in the New Education. The
fact is that the practices of it are almost
wholly new, and an attempt to show this
clearly will be made in Il subsequent
paper.
Some one of late has found that there
is excellent training for the child in max
ing it the teacher sometimes. The plan
was known, both as to theory and prac-
tlce, in India from the remotest ages. 1t
antedates by centuries and centuries Ma
dame Maintenon, Rollin, La Sale, Pesta-
lozzi, Bell and Lancaster, all of whom
practiced it, and the last two of whom
claimed to have invented the system of
instruction based upon it. 1t is the old
docendo dscimus idea of Seneca's
One might read the simple tale Of Ger
rude's home-life, and of her motherly in
terest in her own children and those of
her widowed neighbor, without suspecting
that there was embodied in that tale the
profoundest theory of the great Pestalozzi.
And yet the chief characteristic of the ed
ucation of the early Hebrews was that it
+;otlx Il O. h. Il
not new one to the world when a centu-
ry ago this mighty Swiss educator an
nounced that the instruction and educa-
ton of the people was best sourced in the
home, and he borrowed the idea from
CommeniuS.
Nova days we hear much about Indus
trial Education by the State; but twenty
three centuries ago Solon provided in his
laws that the poor Greek youth might re-
ceive instruction in reading, swimming
and trade"
Very much is said of late about 1.-The
harmonious development of the powers of
the man. but that was the Greek ideal
''harmoniously constitutcd' was Plato's
phrase. In his Laws he omits reading
and writing till the tenth year. Till that
lillIC lliC ClolC NtS DuSS IlldhiliS INC Clilio
what Herbert Spencer says the child ought
first to be, "a good animal" But the
training in the palaestra and the gymna
SUM was meant to furnish a good physi-
cal basis only for intellectual greatness,
and the staple of instruction for the mind
was wisdom, that ethical and prudential
knowledge which was to express itself III
the right action of the individual. ''To
know, to be; and to do the right was the
end of the ideal education of the Greek.
Is such a thing claimed for the new edu-
cation! | believe it is. If so, we are
twenty odd centuries late.
1t is only late thing with us that music
is taught generally in our schools. But
every man that was not a musician was
thought a boor by the ancient Greeks.
The education of Themisloces was re-
garded as having been neglected because
he had not been taught music.
The end Of kindegartcnism is the edu-
cation of children by genial training
of their spontaneous activities TO the pro
duction OF order and beauty within the
humble sphere of childish fancy and af
fecti0u. The idea was new enough with
FroGtCl, bat it is as old as Plato and
Aristotle and was set forth more or less
practically from Commenius to Pestalozzi
| But the worlds eye is only now getting
| for itself the power to see something il
the idea that Froebel, first of all, en-
| bodied in an adequate system of practices.
| However, here is the idea in Plato's Re
public: "From their earliest years, the
| PLAYS of children ought to be subject tC
laws. For if their plays and those who
| mingle with them are arbitrary and law
less, how can they become virtuous men,
| law abiding and obedientl On the con
trary, when children are early trained tC
submit to laws in their plays, love fol
| these laws enters into their souls with the
music accompanying them, and helps
| their development" A similar passage
occurs in his laws, which lack of space for
bids my quoting here.
''Not so much the getting of knowledge
as the getting of strength of intellect il
getting knowledge is, l believe, a favor
tie dogma of the new educationists.
But among the Greeks it was considered
| the highest office of the teacher to liberatt
the thoughts formed by the active energie;
of the pupils own mind distinctly to trair
the faculties of mind rather than to i'm
part information, the most care being be
slowed upon the reason, the least upoI
the memory. One hears much about {
teachers needing to have the genius of in
terrogaton. about the skilful putting 0
questions, leading pupils in logical orde
from the known to the unknown, from
facts to their relations, from illustration
to law. But this is only the Maievtic ar
of Socrates, which needs sadly enough t.
be heralded abroad at any time in tn,
land.
Education is a very skilful discipline
which, by way of amusement, leads tn
mind of the child to love that which is t.
make it finished" "Then use no violenc
toward children; rather, cause them t.
learn while playing' The lesson that i
made to enter the mind by force will no
remain there These quotations read lk
extracts from the writings Of some rabbi
new educationist; but they may all b
found in Plato's Laws, the work of hi
old age, in which he soberly discards man
of the chimeras of his Republic.
Education is a means to an end. Jus
as the conception of the ideal perfect ma
has changed, so educational thought ha
changed, the latter a consideration c
the means for working out the former
The ideal man of the Greeks was the mos
nearly perfect ideal possible to men asid
from Revelation. The Systematically d.
veloped man-in matter of body, minC
and morals-was the aim Of education wit
! Socrates and Plato, with whom the ethic;
uaS a1wayS the HIGHEST cOnSidpratiO